Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Insurers’ in-house and outside counsel should exercise care when writing all or part of a denial letter for a claim handler to sign and send, or counsel may unwittingly waive the company’s attorney-client privilege and find themselves subject to deposition. In
1 The court reasoned that the insured was entitled to depose the individual with personal knowledge of the reasons for the denial, but, at deposition, the claim handler testified she had not received any training on the applicable legal standards, and she could not explain the letter’s analysis of Mississippi law.
2 The court therefore concluded that because the claim handler did not have personal knowledge of the reasons for denial, the insured was entitled to depose the in-house attorney who prepared the letter and to review correspondence between the attorney and the claim handler regarding the claim.